John Varley - Red Thunder

Jubal’s steady rowing pace faltered. Kelly angled the box so he could see inside it.

“Only one lef, cher ,” he said. “I don’ take you las’ Krispy, no.”

“More coming, cher ,” Kelly said. “Can you smell ’em?” It was clear [103] he could. Finally he grinned and tossed a rope to Travis, who tied it to a cleat at the stern of his boat. Kelly and I helped Jubal aboard, and we turned around and headed back home through the early morning light. There was a mist on the water, and a small V of ducks arrived, quacking loudly, and settled gently on the lake. I put my arm around Kelly. It showed signs of becoming a good day.

SWAMP BIRDS ANDother critters were greeting the day when Travis, Jubal, Kelly, and I walked the path back from the lake, with its crunching covering of new white shell. Dak and Alicia were pulling up in Blue Thunder.

It seemed that Krispy Kremes were Jubal’s biggest weakness. They were Travis’s last resort. If he really had to get Jubal’s undivided attention, he offered him donuts.

“Gotta be careful, though,” Travis had said. “Jubal would live on nothing but Krispys if he could drive a car to go get them.”

“Like driving a spike straight into his own heart,” Alicia told us.

“Would you believe Jubal was a skinny little thing when he lived on the bayou? Not much sugar in his diet out there, lots of rice and fish, collards and mustard greens and poke salads. He’s got a sweet tooth you wouldn’t believe.”

Dak had wanted to get three dozen, but Alicia held him down to two. They also brought back supersized paper mugs of Mississippi Mud espresso. We all gathered around the patio table and the food. All of us were yawning.

We dug in like wild javelinas, Alicia watching in horror and volunteering to make some oatmeal if anybody wanted it. But it wasn’t an oatmeal morning, and eventually even she admitted it and ate two donuts. I don’t even want to know how many sit-ups she did that day to make up for it.

At last we all sat back, and I watched Jubal cleaning up the donut boxes like a kid licking the cake icing out of a bowl. He saw me looking at him, and we grinned.

[104] Travis had brought the Squeezer out and set it on the table. Jubal eyed it unhappily, but finally settled back and laced his fingers over his big belly.

“Jube,” Travis said, “I’d like to ask you some questions about this thing, what it does, how it does it… and so forth. I’m not angry, mon cher , and I’m not going to get angry later. We’re just trying to find out, okay?”

“Fire away, Travis,” Jubal said. “Mebbe you get lucky, you.” And he laughed.

“So, what’s in the bubbles, Jubal?”

“In dese bubbles? Jus’ air. Nuttin’ but air.”

“So you… you make this silvery stuff…”

“A force field,” Jubal said. “Like in de comics books.”

“A force field. You’ve lost me already.”

“Los’ me, too, mos’ly. It don’ really ack like nuthin’ else I know from de books.”

“From your physics textbooks.”

“From any my books.” He frowned, then looked surprised. “It don’ take no power, no. No power to make de bubbles, no power to move ’em roun’.”

“You’ve lost me,” Dak said. Travis nodded.

“No power. Lookee here.” He popped open the battery chamber of the Squeezer. The two AA batteries that would normally be there were missing. Wires had been soldered to the two little springs that normally would have touched the bottom part of the battery cylinders. The wires went through two holes that seemed to have been burned with a soldering iron.

“Dis gizmo here, dis be de part initiate de bubbles. Dis part, it take de… de… it take de framework an it twis’ it, ninety degrees from ever’thin’ else, so it ain’t really here in dis… dis… space-time condominimum.” When he mangled that last word, Jubal’s almost impenetrable Cajun accent was nearly gone. I could tell that talking about science was hard for him. His basic vocabulary was limited to the words he learned growing up, and everything he had learned since then was the result of incredibly hard work. Clearly, the idea of a space-time [105] continuum was not one that got a lot of discussion down on the Broussard bayou.

“No power,” Jubal repeated. He took a huge Swiss Army knife from the pocket of his khaki Dockers, pulled out a thin blade. He peeled back a corner of duct tape, then popped that remote open.

You didn’t need a degree in electronics to tell the inside of the remote hadn’t looked that way when it came off the Sony assembly line. There was something in there that had started life as a printed circuit board, but pieces of it had been roughly sawed off-maybe with the saw blade of Jubal’s Swiss Army knife. There was a rubber band holding two parts together, and what might have been a big glob of Elmer’s glue. And other things. Right in the middle were two pieces of bright metal that I had to stare at for a moment before realizing they were the snipped-off barbs of fishhooks.

“Dis where de continimum get twisted,” Jubal said, pointing with a finger callused from rowing. “Dis where de six-D-space get cut down to fo’, which has to cover itself up.” Jubal laughed. “Oderwise, it be a nekkid sinfularity.”

I translated: six-dimensional space, naked singularity.

“Jubal… maybe you just ought to show us what it can do,” Travis said. “And explain what’s happening, if you can. Can you do that?”

“I can do dat.” He picked up the Squeezer, closed it back up. “To make a bubble,” he said, “all you got do is punch de little button here. De one used to say ‘Play.’ I done scratched de word ‘squeeze’ here under it, see?” He showed it around. He frowned at it. “I ain’t perzackly sure I done spell ’er right. I don’t spell so good, me. Is dis right?” He showed it to Dak.

“Jube,” Dak said, “the things this gizmo can do, I think you’ll have everybody spelling it your way.”

“A whole new verb,” Kelly agreed.

Jubal didn’t look convinced, but shrugged and pointed the Squeezer into the air. He pressed the button with his thumb, and a silver bubble the size of a baseball appeared out of thin air.

“De space done twis’ itself, see?” He looked at us, slowly realized none of us had any idea what he was talking about. “Dis button here, [106] dis lock it. Hold dat rascal in place.” He waved the Squeezer around, and the silver bubble stayed exactly three feet from the business end of the device, no matter how quickly Jubal cut it back and forth.

“She work jus’ on de ball,” Jubal explained. “Now, dis button turn de bubble back t’ru ninety degree, all on a sudden.” He pressed the button marked stop, and the bubble was gone.

“Now I make me anudder…” He pressed the SQUOZE button again, and an exact duplicate of the first bubble appeared. “Shoulda call her de twis’ button, me, but I done dis befo’ I done realyize what goin’ on.

“Okay. Now, I twis’ dis dial rat cheer, and de bubble, she squeeze down some.” The bubble shrank until it was BB sized. Jubal thumbed the control several times, turning the dial after each bubble was formed, until we had half a dozen silver BBs floating in the air above the picnic table.

“Now de fun part,” Jubal said with a big grin. He pointed at one of the BBs and fired. Kelly jumped a little as the BB vanished with a bang, about as loud as a firecracker.

Jubal grinned wider as he aimed and shot at the rest of the BBs.

“De air, it be compress, see? Den when de bubble go away… Boom!” He was happy as a kid with his first air rifle, only Jubal’s BBs exploded.